Paul Farmer before the cornerstone ceremony in 2010 for the teaching hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti/Daniel Wallace, Tampa Bay Times, 2010 “Of the billions of dollars nations and aid agencies pledged for earthquake recovery, too much still sits in bank accounts or exists only as budgetary line items. Too many earthquake victims still live under tarps. Too few live in solid homes. Very little has been done to bring lasting benefit to the people of Haiti. It’s enough to make a travesty of former President Bill Clinton’s famous pledge to ‘build back better.’ It’s enough to make anyone cynical about the possibility that charity can help create a strong and independent country. That’s why you might want to click on pih.org, the website of Partners in Health, co-founded by Hernando High School grad — and 2008 Great Brooksvillian — Paul Farmer. Its main post-earthquake project, a new teaching hospital in Mirebalais, 38 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince, was completed in October.”
• Aid shortcomings to Haiti driven by national interests
An article in The Gazette (Montreal) offers a generally negative view of the effectiveness of aid to post-earthquake Haiti and points out that critics of aid to Haiti are quick to cite the apparent failures of aid as a rationale for curtailing further aid.
The article mentions the work of Mark Schuller, professor of anthropology at Northern Illinois University: “In his recently released book Killing with Kindness, author Mark Schuller … said Haiti’s earthquake highlights that there has to be a human rights-based approach to development, rather than one based on national interest.”
Schuller has written: “The earthquake is exposing the weaknesses in the system of international aid … Since the quake, the general public and the mainstream media are thinking and talking about NGOs in a more realistic, critical light.”
Peggy R. Sanday, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, published an article on CNN about gang rape in the U.S. with reference to the gang rape in Steubenville, Ohio, in August 2012. Some young men continue to believe that when a girl gets drunk, staging a sexual spectacle for their mates is part of a night’s fun. They don’t think of it as rape. Some of their buddies, however, disagree. In their transition to manhood, they are able to name rape when they see it. This split opinion is illustrated in the video posted a few days ago by Anonymous showing a young man — presumably an eyewitness — egged on by others, telling his version of what happened. The video footage is disturbing, to say the least. Sanday is the author of the book Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus and A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial. This important book documents how privileged, but perhaps nonetheless insecure, young men forge bonds with each other through gang rape and abuse of “outsider” women at a fraternity house in a major U.S. university.
• On gang rape in India
Two cultural anthropologists published a “letter to the editor” of the New York Times concerning the December gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi, in response to an op-ed by Sonia Faleiro called “The Unspeakable Truth about Rape in India.”Carol Delaney, professor emerita of Stanford University, commented, “Finally, women are speaking out. The highly publicized violent acts of rape against two young Indian women in the last two weeks have drawn the sympathy and attention of the world. That the police suggested marriage to one of the rapists as the solution rather than prison for the perpetrators is simply outrageous. Lawrence Rosen of Princeton University said, “Sonia Faleiro’s courageous statement about violence to Indian women…, like the actions of those who have taken to the streets, is indeed heartening. But are we missing the larger protest against corruption, a police force that is tone-deaf to popular needs and an elitist government that ignores many of its less fortunate citizens? All of these were also true in the period before the Arab Spring. If so, the consequences of the present demonstrations may — and perhaps should — go far beyond the requisite justice for rape victims.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/7/13”→
From the blogger: Here is the last aitn for 2012. I had to work hard to find any mainstream media mention of cultural anthropology, whereas archaeology continues to attract substantial media attention, and we can almost always count on something about Neanderthals to attract interest. Please check out anthropologyworks’ short piece on the cultural anthropologist who was most in the news in 2012. Stay tuned for 2012 highlights from aitn and my top dissertation picks for 2012. And Happy New Year!
Debt by David Graeber• Debt as a best book of 2012
The Global and Mail (Canada) asked several writers and avid readers to comment on their top book of 2012, from contemporary fiction to classic literature and nonfiction. Novelist Sheila Heti chose Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
“I can’t think of anyone who shouldn’t read David Graeber‘s paradigm-shifting book on the ethics of debt. He’s an anthropologist and one of the Occupy movement’s greatest thinkers. Here, he shows how debt has been a central economic, political, and social tool throughout human history. It’s an essential read, particularly for those who, in the wake of the financial crisis, believed we were at the beginning of “an actual public conversation about the nature of debt, of money, of the financial institutions,” and were stunned not to see that conversation happen.” Heti’s most recent book is the novel How Should a Person Be?
• Hadrian’s auditorium found under streets of Rome
Several media sources, including the BBC, covered the findings in Rome of an ancient auditorium 18 feet below one of Rome’s most-trafficked junctions. Italian archaeologists announced the discovery of a 900-seat arts center dating back to the second-century reign of Emperor Hadrian.
Hadrian bust, Palazzo dei Conservatori, Capitoline Museums/Wikipedia Archaeologists believe the structure was an arts center or auditorium, built by Hadrian where, beginning in 123 C.E., Roman noblemen gathered to hear rhetoricians, lawyers, and writers recite their works. According to the archaeologists running the excavation, Hadrian’s auditorium is the biggest find in Rome since the Forum was uncovered in the 1920s.
• 800 year-old skeletons unearthed in Cholula, Mexico
The skeletons were discovered as the archeologists supervised the installation of a new drain in an old neighborhood of Cholula, a city located 120 kilometers north of the Mexican capital. They were found buried just a few centimeters below a paved section of asphalt, said archeologist Ashuni Romero Butron, who added “fortunately they were not damaged by erosion before the paving.” He said most of the 12 skeletons are complete and laboratory analysis is ongoing.
Ramesses• Judean temple found
Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a rare temple and religious figurines dating back to the Judaean period nearly 3,000 years ago. The discoveries were made at Tel Motza, outside Jerusalem, during archaeological work ahead of new highway construction in the area. Anna Eirikh, a director of the project, said the discoveries were rare evidence of religious practices outside Jerusalem in the Judaean period. The findings date to the 9th-10th century B.C.E.
• Death of a pharoah
Scans of the mummy of Ramses III reveal that his throat was slit. The pharaoh Ramses III ruled Egypt in the 12th century B.C.E. A plot by his wife to kill him in order to place her son on the throne is documented in an ancient papyrus, but the exact circumstances of Ramses’ death have been unclear. ”The big cut is in his throat, and it was very deep and large,” said Albert Zink, an anthropologist at the European Academy, who was involved in the research. ”It would have killed him immediately.” Zink and colleagues from Egypt, Italy and Germany, published their findings in the British Medical Journal. [Blogger’s note: so now we know the immediate cause of death, but we still don’t know who did the deed].
• 4,000 year-old spear heads found in Sinaloa, Mexico
Credit: INAH Researchers have discovered 4,000-year-old spearheads and other artifacts at a site in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Archaeologist Joel Santos Ramirez said that the find “will change the chronologies of the antiquity of human settlement in the northwest of the country.”
• Neanderthal genome mapping update
According to a piece in CBC news, renowned archaeological geneticist Svante Paabo is almost finished with the mapping the DNA of Neanderthals, a distant cousin of modern humans.
Paabo has found that many people today carry within their DNA about 3 to 5 percent in common with Neanderthals. Paabo says it is important to learn more about Neanderthal DNA to reveal the differences between us and them, differences that have seen modern humans survive and thrive over the millennia while Neanderthals have become extinct.
Svante Paabo with reconstructed Neanderthal skull. Frank Vinken/Max Planck Gesellschaft He is quoted as saying: “I really hope that over the next 10 years we will understand much more of those things that set us apart. Which changes in our genome made human culture and technology possible? And allowed us to expand and become 7, 8, 9 billion people and spread all over the world?”
• In memoriam
Glenys Lloyd-Morgan died at the age of 67 years after a career devoted to the understanding of Roman archaeology. She graduated from the archaeology department at Birmingham University in 1970 with a dissertation on Roman mirrors. In 1975, she joined the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, where she catalogued collections and did re-enactments as a Roman lady. Later, she became a finds consultant specializing in Roman artifacts. She was made a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1979.
Aw’s Sean Carey published two articles in The Independent about the recent consideration of the Chagossians‘ claim for a right to return to their homeland.
Chagos. Source: refusingtokill.net In his first piece, he reviews the marathon battle that began in 1998 in the British courts, led by electrician Olivier Bancoult, the newly appointed leader of the Chagos Refugees Group. Although all of the judges in the lower courts unanimously found in favor, in 2008 the Law Lords decided against the Chagosssians’ right of return by a narrow 3-2 majority. The islanders are supported by the former British High Commissioner to Mauritius, David Snoxell, novelist Philippa Gregory and conservationist Ben Fogle.
In his second article, Carey reports on the decision: “Yesterday, there was huge disappointment amongst Chagossian communities in Port Louis, Mahe, Crawley, Manchester, Geneva and Montréal. A seven-judge chamber of the European Court of Human Rights decided by majority that the case regarding the right of return of the exiled islanders was inadmissible. Geographically and legally, it has been a long journey with many twists and turns for the islanders, the descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured labourers. The decision by the Strasbourg court means that they continue to be barred from returning to their homeland in the Chagos Archipelago, after their forced removal by the British authorities between 1968 and 1973, so that the US could acquire Diego Garcia, the largest and southernmost island, for its strategically important military base.” After eight years, a decision of inadmissable.
• Declining monkhood in Thailand
In Thailand, Buddhist temples grow lonely in villages as consumer culture rises and there is a shortage of monks. According to an article in The New York Times, monks in northern Thailand no longer perform one of the defining rituals of Buddhism, the early morning walk through the community to collect food. The meditative lifestyle of the monkhood offers little allure to the distracted iPhone generation. Although it is still relatively rare for temples to close down, many districts are so short on monks that abbots here in northern Thailand recruit across the border from impoverished Myanmar, where monasteries are overflowing with novices.
”Consumerism is now the Thai religion,” said Phra Paisan Visalo, one of the country’s most respected monks. He continues, ”In the past people went to temple on every holy day,” Mr. Paisan said. ”Now they go to shopping malls.” William Klausner, a law and anthropology professor who spent a year living in a village in northeastern Thailand in the 1950s, describes the declining influence of Buddhist monks as a ”dramatic transformation.” Monks once played a crucial role in the community where he lived, helping settle disputes between neighbors and counseling troubled children, he wrote in his book, Thai Culture in Transition. Klausner says that today most villages in northern Thailand ”have only two or three full-time monks in residence, and they are elderly and often sick.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 12/24/2012”→
In an op-ed in The New York Times, cultural anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann discusses beliefs and practices of some U.S. evangelical groups who both take the Bible literally and creatively reinterpret its messages in order to build a strong personal link to God. She writes: “I am no theologian and I do not think that social science can weigh in on the question of who God is or whether God is real. But I think that anthropology offers some insight into why imaginatively enriching a text taken as literally true helps some Christians to hang on to God when they are surrounded by a secular world.” Some evangelicals she has interviewed consult God on what clothes to wear and imagine that they are having a cup of coffee with God as part of their day. Luhrman is professor in the department of anthropology at Stanford University. Her latest book, When God Talks Back, was selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012.
• Mining versus cultural heritage in Afghanistan
The Toronto Star reported on the race to save archaeological artifacts at the 5,000 year-old Buddhist site of Mes Aynak, in southeastern Afghanistan. It is the likely victim of extractive mining development. The site sits atop a rich copper deposit, worth up to $100 billion. The remains of the once-thriving Silk Road town will be razed to make way for an open-pit mine run by a Chinese-owned mining consortium. Brent Huffman, a documentary filmmaker and journalism professor at Northwestern University, has spent a year recording the grim countdown to its demise in his film The Buddhas of Mes Aynak.
Some experts suggest a retreat from the U.S. seaside, but they believe that many people are likely to ignore warnings. An article in the Calgary Herald quoted cultural anthropologist Ben Orlove, who is with Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Sciences. He said: the default plan “is just restore.”
Two Cheers for Anarchism
• Big thinker learns from peasants
The New York Times carried a feature article about Yale political scientist — and cultural anthropologist — James C. Scott showcasing his new book, Two Cheers for Anarchism. The article situates Scott on his farm which is northeast of New Haven, Connecticut. “I’m as proud of knowing how to shear a sheep as I am of anything,” Scott is quoted as saying. He holds a joint appointment in anthropology and political science at Yale and is the founder of Yale’s agrarian studies program, as well as an unofficial founder of the field of resistance studies, starting with his classic book Weapons of the Weak. In another book, Seeing Like a State, Scott added a milestone to the social science literature critiquing top-down development. Happy birthday (this past Sunday) to James Scott, and many more!
Happy Birthday, James Scott
• Mining can help indigenous people
Professor Marcia Langton. Source: Colin Murty, The Australian.
When addressing the annual Indigenous Business Enterprise and Corporations Conference in Perth, Australia,
• The poison in the palm oil
The Washington Post reported on the negative environmental effects in Borneo of the booming global demand for palm oil. Critics of the palm oil industry say that the rapid expansion of plantations into Borneo’s countryside benefits a handful of large companies. A joint study published by Stanford and Yale Universities found that land-clearing operations for plantations in Borneo emitted more than 140 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 alone, equal to annual emissions from about 28 million vehicles. Lisa M. Curran, project leader and professor of ecological anthropology at Stanford University is quoted as saying: “We may see tipping points in forest conversion where critical biophysical functions are disrupted, leaving the region increasingly vulnerable to droughts, fires and floods.”
• Genocide trauma transmission is culturally variable Science Daily carried an article about new findings showing that the experience of genocide as transmitted trauma is not universal. The source is ethnographic research published in the journal Current Anthropology. Carol Kidron, professor of anthropology in the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Haifa, examines two case studies: Jewish-Israeli trauma descendants and Cambodian-Canadian trauma descendants. While the Jewish-Israeli subjects felt that they bore some emotional scars that were passed on by their parents, they opposed the idea that they have been afflicted by these inherited traces of the Holocaust. In fact, in the Jewish-Israeli cultural context, these markers of emotional difference may serve instead as an empowering way to carry on their parents’ memory. In contrast, Cambodian-Canadians resist the stigma of trauma and also insist that the genocide has not left them psycho-socially impaired in any way. Instead of remembering tragedy, the Cambodian-Canadian subjects appealed to karma. Kidron’s article is forthcoming in 2013: Alterity and the Particular Limits of Universalism: Comparing Jewish-Israeli Holocaust and Canadian-Cambodian Genocide Legacies,” Current Anthropology 53 (6):723-754.
• Local ecological knowledge for cultural survival
According to Kathryn Demps, sustainable villages and their livelihoods are needed to preserve ecological knowledge in upcoming generations. Demps, a visiting assistant professor in anthropology at Boise State University, studies behavioral and evolutionary ecology in small-scale societies. Her latest project looks at the Jenu Kuruba, a foraging group in South India and how their cultural knowledge is being preserved or lost. As quoted in Science Daily, she says, “What we learn from others — our culture, skills, values, beliefs and knowledge — is passed through the generations…How it is passed down can change the body of knowledge.” She further noted that in today’s race toward homogenous societies, indigenous knowledge is being lost even faster than languages. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 12/3/12”→
• Beware of the 4°: Climate change is real and dangerous
Several media sources, including U.S. News and World Report, mentioned Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank and a physician and cultural anthropologist, in discussing a new report from the World Bank pointing to the need to take climate change/global warming seriously.
• Stop wildlife trafficking
Wildlife “There is a movement afoot to humanize environmental issues, to address them from an anthropological, or human, perspective.” writes Tara Waters Lumpkin, an environmental and medical anthropologist. Her article is published in The Huffington Post and argues for the need address wildlife trafficking. As one example of increasing attention to wildlife protection, Lumpkin notes that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke out against wildlife trafficking at the U.S. Department of State in early November. Secretary Clinton stated that wildlife trafficking is a global security issue, emphasizing the need to enlist the support of the public to stem wildlife trafficking. She also declared the launch on Dec. 4 of Wildlife Conservation Day. Lumpkin has been employed in international aid work and as an environmental anthropologist in both the U.S. and overseas and is President of the non-profit Perception International, which promotes perceptual, cultural and biological diversity through its global projects. She is the founder and executive director of Izilwane, which means “animals” in Zulu. Izilwane explores a new ecological paradigm based on enhancing the relationship of human beings with other species and the natural world.
• Missing women primatologists at conferences
A study by researchers at UC Davis has marked gender inequality in who is chosen to speak at primatology conferences. The study was published in the open access journal PLOS ONE. Lead author Lynne Isbell, a professor of anthropology at UCD, initiated the study after being struck by the scarcity of female speakers at the annual meeting in April of the American Association of Physical Anthropology. “I started wondering if this was a fluke, or something we hadn’t noticed before,” Isbell said. She and two UCD colleagues, fellow anthropology professor Alexander Harcourt and Truman Young, a professor of plant sciences, went through programs from 21 annual meetings of the association, focusing on primatology sessions. They tallied the genders of speakers at symposia; those giving shorter oral presentations; and those presenting posters. (Symposium talks are generally seen as being more prestigious than short oral presentations, with posters — often given by junior researchers and graduate students — being seen as the least prestigious.) They found that symposia organized by men had half the number of female speakers, 29 percent, as those organized by women, 64 percent, or by men and women, 58 percent. Women were far more likely to make poster presentations than give talks, while men presented more talks than posters.
A 1957 photo shows Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (center) with his wife, Alicia, and Clifford Evans of the Smithsonian Institution. Credit: Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo.
The recent revelation of the secret Nazi past of Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, one of Colombia’s best-known anthropologists and a visiting professor at UCLA in the 1970s, has shaken academic circles. According to an article in The LA Times, the native Austrian immigrated to Colombia in 1939 and was famed for his influential studies of indigenous communities and for his books on the unusual stone statues of Colombia’s most important archaeological zone, San Agustin. Reichel-Dolmatoff, who died in 1994, was apparently a member of the Austrian Nazi party and, according to a diary fragment that has been identified as Reichel-Dolmatoff’s, he was also stationed at the Dachau concentration camp. “What this whole affair has shown us is that there were many things in his life we thought we knew but which now are not so clear,” said Carlos Uribe, head of the anthropology department at Bogota’s University of the Andes, a department that Reichel-Dolmatoff and his anthropologist wife, Alicia, founded in 1964. “He was an expert at covering his steps, a chameleon,” Uribe said, adding that Reichel-Dolmatoff, as an academic, was a champion of cultural diversity and indigenous philosophies.”
The seven-acre site for public art in Atlantic City. Photo: Ryan Collerd for the NYT.
In Atlantic City, New Jersey, Hurricane Sandy spared the first phase of a five-year, $13 million public art project that organizers hope will enhance the city’s image. An article in The New York Times quotes Joseph Rubenstein, an anthropology professor at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey who is active in community groups and has worked to enhance Atlantic City with gardens and murals: ”I do think it has healing potential poststorm.” He added that the city’s growth has been centered on the boardwalks, or nearby, and public art “…has to be in combination with work on the rest of the city.”
• Big mining vs. local people in Alaska
Two Kenai Peninsula College anthropology professors concluded that a degradation of the water in Bristol Bay from a major mining project could have devastating nutritional, cultural and religious impacts on the villages in the region. Their study, part of a larger impact assessment carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency, was in response to a request by nine Dena’ina and Yup’ikvillages in the region. Bristol Bay is home to one of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fisheries.
• AAA revised ethics code
The American Anthropological Association announced that its members approved a new ethics code after a five-year review. The revised code was favored by 93 percent of those who voted. In a news release, the association said that the new document is organized according to seven principles, including “do no harm” and “be open and honest regarding your work.” The new document says it is intended to “foster discussion, guide anthropologists in making responsible decisions, and educate.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/12/12”→
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